


Harry (41: 1)

by orphan_account



Series: failure by design [The Watson Vignettes] [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Depression, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, F/M, Family Reunions, Femslash, First Meetings, Gen, Harry Watson meets Sherlock Holmes, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, POV First Person, POV Harry Watson, Pre-Slash, Reconciliation, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 06:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3600321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry (41: 1): "In the time between 2010 and 2015, I met Sherlock Holmes twice." This is the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harry (41: 1)

**Author's Note:**

> Another one in the series! There's more to come for this one, I think. (At least my brain tells me there is. My fingers don't agree yet.) 
> 
> Since it's a stand-alone, a different fic, it's first person POV, unlike the other ones. Still all set in the same universe.
> 
> (Also, much of the base for Harry's character is taken from her behaviour on John's blog, see Sherlock's deduction about her. I've compiled a 6 pages long table of all her posts and comments to John's entries and John's comments on his blog. I was so bloody obsessed with it!)

Harry (41: 1)

 

In the time between 2010 and 2015, I met Sherlock Holmes twice.

*

I admit I was surprised, the first time John so _graciously_ agreed—granted me permission, more like—to meet his Sherlock. God, I remember what a bother it’d been even getting him to let me meet _Sarah_ , one of his lady friends back in 2010.

I was so surprised when John finally said yes. I’d been pestering him for weeks that I’d wanted to meet Sherlock, but I didn’t think he’d ever agree. Like. Ever. I mean I’d been wanting to see his new place for _months_ while he kept being his twattish self, insisting on replying to two out of ten texts and bullying me on that stupid blog of his—he _was_ an arsehole. I’m sure we’ll go out for drinks soon too, John, oh, hardy har, why you so _funny_!—so I resigned myself to basically never seeing the inside of Baker Street. It was fine by me. I liked it better to think of him living inside an old fort of smelly socks and sweaty pants anyway.

Meeting Sherlock Holmes just seemed to be completely out of question. Seeing Baker Street? Girl, you’re asking for Morgoth to be nice. Seeing Sherlock? _That_ ’s like asking Fëanor to stop kissing his own arse. Impossible.

I know part of it was my fault, I’d been in a bad place. Understandably, John didn’t want to be around me back then. Hell, today I wouldn’t have wanted to be around myself either. A walking Glenfidditch isn’t exactly perfume, is it. No matter how stylish the Glenfidditch.

So part of it was my fault. Part of it was John’s. When I say his Sherlock, I mean _his_ Sherlock. It’s the other reason why it took me a couple months to meet John’s man; he was guarding him like a watch dog. When he finally agreed, I was flabbergasted.

I’d been curious, of course. The way John had been going on about him, you’d thought this Sherlock dude— _and what a weird name_ , that was one of the first thoughts I had about Sherlock—was some demigod. A god. For John, certainly, _the_ God. A couple shades way more real, much less fictional, apparently with Einstein’s brain. According to John, Sherlock has ten of those.

I didn’t believe him at first.

To my defence, I wasn’t the only one in a bad place in 2010. John wasn’t a bowl of cherries either, after Afghanistan. He was messed up, even more so than before, and I’d thought… well. I’d thought John was about to keep me company in hell. I’d thought he’d finally gone around the bend. It wasn’t a bad guess. I’d seen him once, after Afghanistan. I still remember, doesn’t matter what he says. Yeah, my brain was sludge. No, finding a fucking _gun_ in one of your little brother’s drawers wasn’t something you could forget even while pissed as hell.

I’d seen him once only. He hadn’t wanted me to see him in hospital. He’d wanted me to see him home, on his own two legs—well… on his one leg…—where he was fully in control over what was happening and could chuck me out any time he wanted. Home was a mouse hole, to be honest, and boy was I pissed about how he preferred _that_ to staying with me, but whatever. That was then. That was me snooping around his _flat_ while he was taking a piss; that was me finding the gun, slapping him across the face and getting myself thrown out.

John in his mouse hole with a gun hidden like some precious piece of cheese kept for… times in need. (I still don’t like to think about it.) When he started that blog of his then telling stories about something that might’ve come straight from a Bond film, yeah, I thought he’d gone mad. I’d been worried, so much, but there wasn’t a lot I could do when he kept ignoring me. I suppose I wouldn’t have been much help anyway, with how I was myself. It wasn’t a good time, for either of us.

To cheer myself up, I always remember how he started ranting about a _bloke_ of all things, and Christ, in _what_ a way too.

The bloke that’d had him captivated, apparently, was called Sherlock Holmes. A madman. ‘Me and Sherlock Holmes, the madman.’ That’s what John wrote, for all the world to see. It’s one of the things I was curious about first of all, besides the fact that John was going on about him like he was Elvis Presley: the fact that John called someone a _madman_ in such a public space. It’s not like John, usually, to brand someone mad or crazy, even in private. He’s not specifically nice, but he’s sociable. He usually gets along with people not because that’s his nature but because he doesn’t want the hassle of not getting along with them. (And, yeah, because he’s decent.) So, I thought, that Sherlock Holmes must be quite the chap. Possibly insane, the certified kind. Definitely something.

I let off the alcohol again, around the middle of the year. Clara wasn’t speaking to me, so I was… rather alone, when John ignored me. But that was my fault, both of it. And anyway, after I got a bit better, John agreed to meet up with me, and I met Sarah. So I gritted my teeth and went with it, spent fewer evenings at the office and instead wasted away at home.

It wasn’t much home, without Clara, and it wasn’t very nice, to say the least.

To keep myself busy I met up with Bill—Bill Murray—a couple times and reluctantly looked at a couple AA leaflets. I thought staying off the bottle was enough to fix my issues, but… it wasn’t. Self-denial has always been the Watsons’ strongest suit. I was horrible to be around, so blind I couldn’t see where my feet were going. (Never mind occasionally being so hammered my feet refused to walk a straight line.)

Now I feel sorry for Bill, who was too nice for his own good and stuck with me anyway. John did the right thing, I guess. I was alone, yes, and he ignored me, yes, but I’m an adult. I’m a grown person. I make my own decisions and have to clean up my own messes. That’s what living in alcohol was, that’s what coming off it meant.

John’s occasional word of genuine approval was… a motivation.

Anyway. Stalking John’s blog and reading about the insanity that seemed to be Sherlock Holmes made me all the more eager to finally meet the man himself. He sounded mad, as John wrote—and I certainly wanted to see what kind of person John would call _charming_ , because John doesn’t even call gap-toothed little kids charming!—but more than that he seemed to be a source of _something_ for John, something that drew the mouse out of its hole and away from the cheese, so to speak.

Eh. That’s not really it, though, is it? Sherlock did draw the mouse from the hole, but—well, he gave it _more_ cheese, gave it something else to do with the cheese than suicide by oral consumption. I guess Sherlock was another mouse who occasionally got high on dangerous amounts of cheese and who realised John was sort of the same, so they went and were two stupid mice with too much cheese together. It was okay. I was wary of Sherlock at first, sometimes furious because of the danger he seemed to put John in, but that made as much sense as being furious with a wall. If anything, I should have been furious with John, but—it’s no use. I know that, by now. It’s who he is, John. It’s what he needs. Took me ages to get to that point. To say, ‘it’s who he is’ and accept it without feeling the need to tear down walls. At least he wasn’t alone in that anymore, I told myself. They balanced each other out. And it wasn’t like I had any space in John’s life anyway, at that point.

Christ, I’d been so bitter about that.

Sometimes I’d wondered if allowing me to meet Sherlock was Johnnish for extending a bit more than a courtesy. I’d wondered if it wasn’t him opening up his hand for mine under the table where no one saw. Giving me the backstage pass. I’d wondered if he wasn’t saying hello _. Hello. Hello again. Look, this is my life, this is what I do, this is who I am now. You’re welcome. Come on in. You’re welcome again. I think I can trust you again._

Now I know it was. Now I know meeting Sherlock was a proof of John’s budding trust. He was saying: _Look here. My life. If you come in, you’ll see this bloke, Sherlock. I share it with him._

I didn’t realise it at the time.

The night we were meeting, I’d been off the alcohol for three weeks straight. I needed less perfume, since the smell had gone a bit. I felt fresher than I had in a while, but off-centre, wobbly, like I was walking on ten inch heels over a tightrope stretched across a chasm. I didn’t like it at all, and I still hadn’t contacted AA, never really intended to back then I think, but I made the effort for John. I made sure to smell clean. To look clean. To be clean.

It was the first of many attempts. It wasn’t the last to fail.

*

We agreed on a rather quaint Chinese, some way out in Soho. When John texted me the address I had to keep myself from telling him to go fuck himself. Inviting out a lesbian to Soho. How very fucking ha ha. I knew it wasn’t John’s idea, so I wondered if John had saddled himself with a flatmate who was a bit too intent on mentioning how very much he was not homophobic. I still agreed. I hadn’t seen John in a long while, and it wasn’t really like John to hang out with homophobic arseholes. (At all.) If that Sherlock Holmes wanted to meet me as a lesbian and not as Harry Watson, who just happened to be lesbian, fine, whatever. He certainly wasn’t the first prick to do that. It was about John, anyway, and I was resolved to hold back a lot that night.

Still, the Chinese was nice. Quiet, homely, in that way that foreigners’ restaurants are homely. When I eat out it’s usually around more expensive places, but I liked it. It was November, so it was cold, and I was glad to be inside. The older Chinese man smiled a wide, half-toothy smile at me—he was missing quite a number of teeth—when I mentioned the name Holmes. I was led to a corner table already decked out, where I then sat…

…to wait over half an hour.

They were late. _Spectacularly_ late, actually, and I had half a mind to order a Sake out of spite but kept myself busy shooting John a number of angry caps lock texts and sipping at my water. After the eleventh I got back a ‘Be right there’ without a sorry. Around the forty minutes mark they finally deigned to show up, with a right racket too. Laughter was the first thing I heard. It took me a moment to place it as John’s, but there aren’t many pint-sized men in ugly jumpers about.

Such one stumbled into the restaurant, completely disregarding the way the door banged against the wall. I sat up straighter, felt myself go stiff all over. How stupid, really, to be nervous about your brother laughing, but then again I hadn’t heard it in such a long time, so it was a bit weird. A bit bad weird, but a bit good weird too, because it was so _nice_ to hear that sound again. We…

Well. As John is so _fond_ of saying: we don’t get along well. He’s always ignored the way he was, and still is, my idiot. And I want my idiot to laugh, he’s boring otherwise.

He definitely wasn’t boring then. He was looking back over his shoulder at the other man that’d followed him inside, a huge grin on his face. The man was speaking animatedly, one hand on the door to hold it open for them, the other doing some quick gestures mid-air.

My first impression of Sherlock Holmes was: fucking _tall_. He _towered_ over John, actually, and that just somehow sent me into a fit of laughter I couldn’t hide in time. John heard it, of course he did. The conversation between them broke off abruptly, and my laughter did too. They were both staring at me as if they weren’t quite sure what I was doing here, or what they were doing here. I was looking back the same way, the stiffness again in my back.

I was completely still. The entire restaurant felt completely still, the noise of the conversations around us falling away. I watched John watching me, and Sherlock Holmes watched us both. The moment was broken by John visibly straightening and the older Chinese man grabbing Mr Holmes by the arm and beginning to speak to him in rapid, obvious awe. John left him there and walked towards me, calm and collected. A bit stiffly, but then he didn’t have his walking stick with him. His jaw was clenched. He clearly expected a confrontation.

My stomach clenched in disappointment, but I stood up, waited for him. I couldn’t fault him, not really, but I did anyway. I faulted a lot of people other than me, back then.

“Harry,” he said, then took a moment to blatantly look me up and down.

I stood taller, clenched my own jaw. I had to keep myself from hugging him. We’d never hugged much, never were physically affectionate—this was John—and he was walking without his walking stick. His leg was working again. He’d laughed. He looked like he’d gained a few, well-needed pounds. Of course I had to clench my jaw.

“Johnny,” I said, didn’t step out from behind the table because I wasn’t getting my hug anyway. It was easier to hide my hands that way too. John looked both relieved about that and ticked off by the name. He’d always hated it. I hated the way he was estranging me, so Johnny it was.

He sat on the opposite side, in a weird way, his body twisted a bit to the side. I sat down as he took off his jacket. He glanced towards Mr Holmes, who was still talking to the older man, and looked back at me, somewhere at my face. I just looked right back at him, probably for a bit longer than was polite, but screw polite: John looked _healthy_. I had to stare. I had a fleeting thought about how Sherlock Holmes had done more for John than I had ever been able to, and wasn’t sure if I was thankful or spiteful for it.

“So, you’re still...”

“Yes,” I broke in, rather loudly. I cleared my throat. “Yes. A full three weeks now.”

“That’s...” For the first time, John met my eyes. “That’s great, Harry. You should be proud of yourself.”

I wasn’t. I’d done it for him. I didn’t want him to know that the craving was as bad as it had always been, and because I thought nothing ever fucking changed I needed it worse than ever. So I just shrugged.

“That’s him then, yeah?” I nodded towards Sherlock Holmes. “Your Hercules?”

John’s nostrils flared. “Yes,” he bit out. “That’s _Sherlock_.”

“Oh, your _Sherlock_ , then.” I allowed myself a small grin at the way John so visibly bristled. God, was it still so easy to rile him up? “Have to say I’m glad to see him; it’s good to know that he exists. I was afraid you’d gone completely bonkers.”

“Yes. Well.” John shifted uneasily on the chair. “Living with him is a bit bonkers, I suppose.”

“Hate to break it to you, baby brother,” I said, “but you were quite bonkers before him, let’s be honest.”

John’s head shot up. He glared at me. Good to see that two other things hadn’t changed: he still looked stupidly adorable when he glared. And he still detested the way I took frankness into my mouth like I did with alcohol. He still does. I suppose that’ll never change.

Silence. He looked down at the table, I kept looking at him. A couple seconds into this riveting activity—the tablecloth must have been intriguing—he suddenly grimaced. This made me glare in turn. I hadn’t said a _word_ , even though I wanted to _._ I’d let him keep his precious silence. What did he have to grimace about now—

“John.”

Both our heads snapped up. Sherlock Holmes was standing before our table, holding a bottle of water and two glasses in his hands. So this was him: Mr Holmes. Sherlock Holmes. So this was what he sounded like.

He was odd. From the way he was dressed—even more elegantly than me, all fitted clothes and satin scarf—to the way he looked. He was all angles. His hair was black, clearly windswept, but it suited him. His narrow, longish face suited him. He had slanted, bright eyes, weird, full lips, and cheekbones that put that Hiddleston guy to shame. I couldn’t decide if he was pretty or handsome, or both, but God the man was a real looker.

He looked at John and held the water bottle aloft. “I got us water,” he said, and for no reason at all I knew that he knew about me. He didn’t say it while looking at me—he hadn’t looked once at me in fact—and he said it without inflection, but sometimes you just have a feeling, you know? You have a feeling. This one said he knew.

He knew about me, but I didn’t know how to feel about him knowing. Well. Maybe John hadn’t told him. Maybe he’d figured it out when he’d looked at me while… _not_ looking at me. If I asked John if he could do that, hell, he’d probably say yes. God, what a pair of nutters, I thought.

“Thanks,” John said, with a small smile. Sherlock’s mouth twitched into an answering small smile. His eyes stayed on John. They were warm, and soft, and they lingered. They lingered a whole lot.

I thought, Oh. _Oh._

Then, as if snapping out of it, Sherlock put the water and glasses on the table, a tad too forcefully.

He turned to me. He looked straight into my eyes, and his were now sharp and focused. It felt kind of weird, being watched by them. Kind of intense, unpleasant. He said nothing, held out his hand.

I looked at it for a moment too long, but then I shook his hand. Briefly. Reluctantly. “Harry.”

His eyes were on my face for some more seconds, flickering back and forth, before he said, “Obviously,” and took his coat off with a flourish. He sat down beside John, who had gone completely still.

I looked after him, frowning. What a dramatic tosser. I had half a mind to call him ‘Obviously’ for the rest of the night.

“So,” John said, breaking the silence. He cleared his throat, glanced from Sherlock to me. “So.”

“Once again, your eloquence knows no bounds, John,” Sherlock said.

Something about the mocking tone of his voice annoyed me. I suddenly remembered Soho.

“So, by the way.” I managed to swallow most of the annoyance, but my voice was still tense. I felt it in my throat. “Who had the brilliant idea of getting dinner in bloody _Soho_ of all places?”

John cringed like he’d swallowed sour milk, and his eyes went over to Sherlock, who was ignoring him and watching me. I scowled at him. I fucking _knew_ it.

Sherlock didn’t seem to feel the object of attention at all. He shrugged, said nonchalantly, “Water?” and poured himself a glass. Before he could pour John one, John grimaced and shifted in his seat again.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you threaten to defile some poor wall on the way, John? I don’t think Mr Nguyen will thank you if you leave human waste material on his chair, even if you are with me.”

John’s face twisted. He muttered, “Shut up,” but didn’t budge other than shift around some more. I watched the both of them curiously, Soho momentarily forgotten.

“Now, I think,” Sherlock said pointedly and reached for John’s glass. At the sound of the water sloshing, John squirmed noticeably more, and I suddenly understood.

I had to laugh despite myself. “Oh God, please just go take a piss.” John’s face was priceless: he looked so _panicked_ at having to pee. “I swear we won’t kill each other. And Mr Nguyen and little Johnny will really thank you for it.”

John said, “ _Ugh_ ,” feelingly. It just made me laugh more.

“Please do, John,” Sherlock said. He set down John’s glass on the table. “Homicide will most likely not occur, but if you keep squirming around like that, chances are it will.”

John hid his face for another moment behind his hand, muttered a mortified, “Christ,” before he squirmed a last time and shot up out of his seat. His face was red. “I swear, if I catch you...” he began, never went on. “Don’t you dare—”

“ _Go_ ,” Sherlock and I said simultaneously without any idea as to whom of us John was actually addressing. John clenched his teeth, granted first me then Sherlock a murderous look and stalked off as dignified as possible with his legs clenched.

Sherlock and I were alone then. It wasn’t even five seconds before he spoke.

“I chose Soho. The environmental conditions here seemed promising enough to contribute to your relaxation.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. After a moment I said, “...What?”

Sherlock sighed. “You are openly homosexual,” he elaborated, as if that clarified anything. It didn’t. He kept silent, seemed to wait for an answer. I didn’t know what to say.

“You don’t understand,” he said after a pause.

I startled both myself and him by laughing. He sounded _frustrated_. “Nope. Can’t say I do.”

“Ah.” He waved a hand, said, offhand, “A Watson trait.”

“Nnnope,” I said, decisively. “A _John_ trait. Descartes got him the shirt to prove it.”

Sherlock frowned.

“Well, _I_ got him the shirt, but Descartes made it. ‘Non intellego, ergo sum.’ Does John still have it?” I asked, hopefully.

“I… don’t know,” Sherlock said slowly, apparently confused at the turn the conversation had taken. Somehow, him being confused was way scarier than him being cryptic.

“So, you were saying something about me being openly homosexual?” I prompted him. There was something about Sherlock that made addressing my homosexuality over the dinner table less surreal than usual. Much less surreal. Well. Usually it was never addressed this explicitly. Or at all. People have weird ideas about what constitutes taboos.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, and that was all. He held my gaze, then looked down at the table. I kept staring at him. If this was the Game of Stares, he’d lost. I was already sitting on the Iron Throne. You don’t start a topic like _that_ just to drop it. What the hell.

From the bathrooms came a loud noise, like a gurgling. My eyes shot over to the direction of the men’s loos. A shouted “Fuck!” later (unmistakably John) and a waitress sighed and rushed over to the bathrooms before anybody could react.

Sherlock smiled to himself briefly and turned to me again. He wrinkled his nose, seemed unsure about something. Then his eyes met mine squarely, and, folding his hands underneath his chin, he began to speak. “You are openly homosexual. Earlier, you said _bloody_ Soho, and both your word choice and your throat—your tendons work the same way as John’s—suggested tension; you expected the choice of location to be the result of homophobic intent. Your insistence on wanting to know the answer indicates restlessness, so possibly you were the recipient of such behaviour before and wanted to know if I resembled an earlier culprit. I assumed as much: John’s obsession with others to perceive him as strictly heterosexual indicates either homophobia or a strong discomfort with being mistaken for a gay man. Since I think we can both rule the former out, the latter it is, so experience with previous homophobic encounters are likely. Probably of the personal variety, John denies being gay quite vehemently each time and with great frequency, so whatever happened affected him to a great degree; it still lasts to this day. A previous homophobic encounter, personal, lasting effects. Easy. Of course it’s you.”

I forgot to breathe.

Sherlock didn’t. He took one breath and then continued. “You don’t get along well with John and vice versa, your interaction shows that. From the way you looked at him for an unproportionally long time when he came to the table, I’d say it’s a childhood feud gone wrong, a misunderstanding, that sort of thing. You presumably noticed he no longer needs the crutch when you stared; you heard him laugh; probably you didn’t notice he gained weight. You call his penis a diminutive of his first name, which passes as teasing for you. You comment regularly on his blog posts, mostly as soon as they’re up and at different times a day even after John chooses to ignore you. You almost always initiate verbal attacks against one user who repeatedly mocks either John’s person or his writing style. You care for John, I’d say immensely. You may be off the alcohol at the moment, but it won’t be long until you’re not. You hid your hands underneath the table the entire time, were reluctant to shake my hand. Your hands are trembling. Your left eye has a nervous tic. You crave the alcohol, nothing changed. You’re afraid if John knows he’ll stop talking to you again. So you pull yourself together, two weeks, three, tell him you’re on the wagon.”

Underneath the table, my hands were trembling. I didn’t know if I should be angry or not. The words sounded malicious, but they weren’t. They were a report. An observation. A deduction of the minutely visible. My mouth was open, my mind a blank stretch. There wasn’t a thought to be had.

“It’s true for the moment, so you’re not lying; you know how John despises liars, and to think he would think such of you when you’re trying to re-establish your connection is something you can’t abide. But you’ll fail,” Sherlock said slowly. “You’ll fail, because you’ve got no incentive. You gave John your phone, Clara’s phone. He still has it. You haven’t asked for it back. Maybe you stopped caring for Clara and forgot about the phone, but no. You’d never forget about it. You’d never give John a thing of no importance. You gave it to John after his return from Afghanistan, you knew he was in a bad place, he wouldn’t accept your help, you worried, so to show him you care you gave him Clara’s phone. John is important to you, so the phone is important to you. If Clara were back, you’d want it back. John still has it.” A pause, to let the words sink in. They sank in very well. “You apparently have little incentive other than smidgens of brotherly love. It won’t be enough. You’ll fail.”

Anger was now definitely thrumming through my temples. There was another curse coming from the bathrooms, another waiter running towards the sound, but we both ignored it. I buried my nails in my trousers, ready to more than snap at him. I inhaled, and—

“Hence Soho,” Sherlock continued before I had the chance to say a word. He talked right over my anger. “I knew you’d be nervous about tonight, and one nervous Watson would be enough to screw an attempted reconciliation up. John cares for you—he keeps all your letters from Afghanistan in his bedside drawer, for one—and a cock-up of tonight would have undoubtedly influenced his ability to perform. He is of no use to me and the work if his mood wavers constantly. We have an important case coming up. His assistance to my work is invaluable, so Soho it was. As a hotspot for gay London it welcomes alternative lifestyles, so I calculated having dinner here would put a homosexual with unfortunate past homophobic encounters and a likely violent history at ease.” He cleared his throat. “Soho isn’t John’s fault. Neither is our delay. I took a bit… longer… to finish that case. Very surprisingly, John was much more relaxed by the end of it.”

What the hell. What the actual fucking hell. Was he just full of shit, or was he rude, or was he an arsehole, or was he all of that? Jesus. God. So Soho had been a misguided attempt at… what? Improving the chances of a reconciliation? I had no idea what to say. Fuck you? Thank you?

Christ, the guy was an arsehole. An honest one.

He took a sip from his water, looking uninterested now that he’d said his piece. Chin supported on his palm, he briefly glanced down at his watch and then looked towards the bathrooms. I’d nearly forgotten about John, with Sherlock’s flood of words running me over. Had he drowned in there or something? At least the gurgling had stopped.

“You’re actually an arsehole, you know?” I said. Holding back was all fine, but I had to say this. The anger had dissipated a bit. “You’re quite an arsehole.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “I know.”

He sounded _bored_ and shot me such a wide grin that all his teeth showed. It was obviously fake, since I was sure the small one for John earlier was genuine. I had to laugh again. Christ, tonight was the most surreal evening I’d had in a long while. I couldn’t believe it, not really, yet I could. Hadn’t John already said it all? A madman. A complete barmy madman. And a sodding genius. I had no idea if I liked him or not then, but I appreciated the frank, no-nonsense approach of his lacking social grace. It reminded me of myself a bit.

“You’re an arsehole,” I repeated, because it demanded repetition. Now I got why John called him charming. He was right up John’s alley. “You’re an arsehole, but fuck me if that wasn’t also ridiculously _brilliant_.”

The smile froze, and he sat taller. More stiffly. “What?”

I’d never heard a single word infused with so much disbelief.

“That was brilliant,” I said.

He was blinking, saying nothing, as if he didn’t know how to deal with this. There was no response forthcoming, but that was okay. In that moment, there was a horrid clatter coming from the bathrooms, and John stormed out and towards our table.

“We thought—burst pipe—I didn’t know what,” he was bumbling, then stopped short. He was red in the face and panting, took in the scene before him. Me, smiling very slightly, Sherlock silent. “You still both have your heads,” he said abruptly, wary.

“Oh, yeah. Sherlock might’ve lost his in a bit, though, he’s quite a bastard,” I said lightly. “If he just wasn’t such a bloody genius.”

John continued looking wary for all of two seconds, before he broke out into a grin. He knew what I meant. I was talking about our joint flaw: we both have a tragic weakness for geniuses.

“That’s Sherlock Holmes for you,” he said, sitting down. From the corner of his eye, he was glancing at Sherlock, who was looking back at him, unimpressed. “Rude and arrogant, sometimes ignorant—has no clue the Earth goes around the sun!—but he’s bloody amazing. You should see him at a crime scene, he’s fantastic, the way he dissects some stains, or scuff marks, something of no consequence to any of us but all it takes is Sherlock and a minute or two, and it’s all done. Sometimes he goes ‘Oh’ and you know that’s when he’s had a brilliant moment again, and then he rattles it off in a bit, and that’s it, case solved. He’s insane. Fantastic. Brilliant.”

John was completely wrapped up in Sherlock. He said all this with a grin on his face that was bright and proud and a light to his eyes that made me raise my eyebrows. So, _this_. So this was what it was, what I’d been dying to see. John Watson conjuring up Heaven over a _bloke_ , gaining himself Billy’s ‘have you gone gay’, my ‘get a room.’

This was _John_. John ‘have you seen Clara’s boobs’ Watson. John ‘I’ve never looked twice at a man before’ Watson.

What the hell. It _had_ been quite get a room-y, from John Watson, heterosexuality personified, to another man.

“You should work on your vocabulary, John,” Sherlock said mildly, but he didn’t blink at John’s praise. If anything, he looked pleased about it, really, something infinitely chuffed about his mouth and eyes. His eyes, they’d gone warm again.

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be Sherlock Holmes,” John joked, but he cleared his throat, as if suddenly coming back to himself. He fiddled around with the napkin at his side and glanced at me, almost nervously.

I meant to say something teasing, possibly ‘get a room’ again, but there was something so genuine about the way Sherlock’s pose was much more relaxed now that John was back again that made it feel wrong, like overstepping a line.

I didn’t care about overstepping lines. Still I said, “You’d need to step on a ladder to be him,” instead and didn’t really know why. I still don’t.

Dinner somehow went from there.

It was much nicer than I’d anticipated. I’d expected John to be all uptight and suspicious about me, but Sherlock’s presence helped a lot. Occasionally Sherlock said something that made John groan his name, occasionally I said something that made John groan my name. I kept myself together for most of the time, even though I slipped up once or twice, said something harsh that earned John’s harsh glare and words in response. All in all, though, it was okay.

Sherlock and I didn’t talk much to each other; our point of connection was John, and it showed. It didn’t matter at all.

I was too preoccupied watching John laugh and splutter and mutter in exasperated fondness to care. I was too preoccupied watching John be _happy_. It was such a vast, incredible difference to before, John in his mouse hole with his fucking gun, that it didn’t matter that Sherlock was odd or brilliant or arrogant; what mattered was that Sherlock _was_ , that for whatever reason he was with John in whatever way they had going on, and that because Sherlock was, John was happy.

And if I caught Sherlock looking at John the same way he had at the start of this—lingering, small, and warm—I said nothing. I didn’t care for pity, I didn’t care for Sherlock, but I just took the holding back thing as a challenge for myself and gave my best. Hell, I’d not touched a drop of alcohol for three weeks. I could do this.

Still, when dinner came to an end—and all three of us still had our heads attached—I felt the blankness creep up on me. The melancholia. I was positive I’d been able to keep John from seeing my hands, but they were still trembling. To Sherlock’s credit, he didn’t say a thing about it.

After dessert and mid-conversation, Sherlock got up, put on his jacket and left us sitting at the table to go to the bar. John looked after him, said, “He does that,” in answer to my not-question. As soon as Sherlock was out of earshot, his eyes were on me.

I sat in silence. The closer the night came to ending, the more I didn’t want this to end. I took a deep breath through my nose.

“So,” John began again. “When you were alone, earlier, what _were_ you talking about?”

“Nothing much. We were just chatting,” I lied, a bit subdued. Oh, John could ask about _that_ all right.

“Sherlock doesn’t chat,” John says immediately, as if he was the authority on All Things Sherlock. Probably fancied himself to be.

I shrugged. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to talk about, and I didn’t really care either way. I purposely said nothing; I could feel myself getting impatient, getting antsy. Better to end the evening in calm silence than in honest anger.

John scowled at me, somehow wrong-footed. He kept the silence, but he was fighting with himself. He still didn’t seem to know that no matter how blank his face, his throat would always betray him.

“Just tell me,” he bit out ultimately, leaned forward. “If you said anything—”

“Anything what?” My voice came out snippy.

“I don’t know, anything—anything weird, anything— _untoward_ , Harry, and I’ll have you on a stick—”

“Oh, come on. You won’t.” I added, before I could stop myself, “That would require you to actually interact with me _willingly_.”

John scowled even more. “Not the point. What I meant to say is—”

“I don’t care what you meant to say,” I snapped. I was still quite calm, but it was only a matter of time. It always was, back then. “If you want to know what we were talking about ask him yourself, leave me out of it. You’re good at that, anyway.”

“Don’t do this now, it’s hardly the place—”

 _As if it ever fucking is._ God, maybe the night ending now would actually be good. I was getting more and more riled up.

“ _I_ ’m not doing anything. You’re the one keeping me across the fucking country away from yourself, so don’t fucking start involving me now in whatever issues you’ve got with—” _Your_ _lover boy_ sat on the tip of my tongue. I felt vicious. It felt like more than just my hands were shaking. “—Sherlock, because it’s not _what we do_ , is it, John? Because we _don’t get along_ , John, do we?”

At those words, John’s face immediately went blank. He was retreating. I watched the familiar progression with a sneer on my face. There was a dull pressure in my chest that hurt.

“God, yeah, _whatever_ ,” I spat. I got up, pulled on my jacket. I suddenly couldn’t stay here and watch John’s expressionless face a moment more. We were always turning in the same, horrid circles. Nothing would ever change, I’d thought, though I’d had hopes it would for that night. Then I was just tired. “Look, it doesn’t matter.” I’d thought it never did, to him. “It was nice to see you. Keep Sherlock around, he makes you happy. Try to stay safe, I’ll try to stay on the wagon. See you sometime.”

I left the both of them in the restaurant without another word. I didn’t say goodbye to Sherlock, I didn’t care, and I know he didn’t particularly care either.

When I went home, Sherlock’s words turned about in my head. I didn’t want to think of them; they made me think of my empty flat, and work, and Clara. I didn’t want to be thinking about either of these things at all. I didn’t want to be _thinking_ , period.

I did anyway.

With a bottle of champagne from the Tesco’s around my corner, it was much easier.


End file.
